1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photographing device, a photographing method, and a program, and particularly relates to a photographing device, a photographing method, and a program that are provided to photograph a plurality of images with different brightness levels consecutively.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, when photographing is performed according to an auto-exposure method by using a photographing device such as a digital camera, the photographing device is provided with a function of performing the so-called auto-exposure (AE)-bracket photographing. During the AE-bracket photographing, a plurality of images obtained through different exposures is photographed at the same time, where the images correspond to a reference-exposure value calculated by a processor or the like provided in the photographing device, a value lower than the reference-exposure value by as much as a predetermined amount, and a value higher than the reference-exposure value by as much as the predetermined amount.
During the AE-bracket photographing, a user specifies the brightness quantity with reference to reference brightness so that photographing is performed while increasing and/or decreasing the reference brightness by as much as predetermined quantity.
As a technology achieved by using the above-described images obtained through the different exposures, a photographing device performing the so-called overlap photographing had been proposed, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-92378, for example. The overlap photographing is performed to generate the composite image corresponding to a wide-dynamic range by merging the image signals corresponding to a plurality of images with different exposure amounts, for example.